Author: Published: 09/11/2025 Washington Informer
Locals Question Transparency, Warn of Environmental and Health Risks in Rally Before Task Force Meeting
Toya Beacham addresses the crowd of community members and media personnel during a rally and press conference condemning a proposed data center in Landover, Maryland, using her speech to speak against the prioritization of capitalistic interests over human health.
The proposed construction of a data center at the former Landover Mall site has left many Prince George’s County residents and organizers outraged due to the potential health and environmental implications the project could bring.
The $5 billion data center campus, dubbed Brightseat Tech Park and proposed by Lerner Enterprises, would comprise five facilities, spanning 4.1 million square feet of the 87-acre site, which could utilize up to 820 megawatts of power. Because of its size and the numerous facilities within, this project would be considered a “hyperscale” data center.
While its construction hasn’t been completely approved yet, many Prince Georgians feel officials lacked transparency when greenlighting the project.
“Real transparency means that every step of this process should happen in plain view of the workers, taxpayers and general public,” said Prince George’s County resident and Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) organizer Toya Beacham at a rally and press conference condemning the project on Sept. 10. “The community is watching.”
This rally was held outside the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission just before the Prince George’s County Qualified Data Center Task Force met for its regular public meeting to discuss the proposed site.
Despite the rainy weather, the rally attracted dozens, with many making their way inside to observe the meeting.
Even though the task force meeting was not a forum where the public could provide testimonials, organizers and participants were determined to use their overwhelming quantity to show officials their concern regarding the project.
“No matter how many billions of dollars they have, they are not more powerful than the people,” said Eugene Puryear of the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition to the crowd. “They’re not more powerful than you.”
Data Centers’ Toll on Environment, Resources
Researchers from the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Harvard University, University of Pisa and University of California, Los Angeles, reported that between Sept. 2023 and Aug. 2024, data centers in the U.S. accounted for more than 4% of the nation’s total energy consumption— with 56% of the needed energy coming from fossil fuels.
The Congressional Research Service recently published a report stating that data center energy consumption in the U.S. is projected to account for up to 12% of the country’s energy use by 2028. With a larger demand on the energy grid, an increase in these facilities could mean a spike in consumers’ energy bills, as much as 8% by 2030, according to an analysis by the Open Energy Outlook (OEO) Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University.
Per the OEO analysis, “Traditional utility planning assumes predictable 1%-2% annual demand growth over decades, but data centers are driving regional growth rates of 20%-30% annually.”
An increase in energy demand could lead to the use of more fossil fuels, adding to the greenhouse gases emitted due to the operations of a data center.
In a place like Prince George’s that already faces problems with air pollution— garnering the locale a failing grade for ozone pollution in the American Lung Association’s 26th annual State of the Air report— the increased air pollution from a data center the size of the proposed Brightseat Tech Park could put vulnerable communities in the area at risk.
“From a health perspective, from a quality of life perspective, there are many potential negative problems that can come in,” Puryear told The Informer. “So people really should look very closely at this and look very closely at the promises that are being made that I think have a lot of holes in them.”
Another potential implication that comes with the construction of data centers is the effect on the water supplies in the area surrounding them. To avoid chip overheating, these facilities require extensive amounts of water to cool down their servers. According to the Environmental and Energy Study Initiative, large data centers can use up to 5 million gallons of water a day, which is the amount of water needed to sustain a town with a population of 10,000 to 50,000.
If the proposed facility at Landover Mall is built without the proper consideration for residents’ well-being, such a large quantity of water needed daily could cause water pressure issues and affect people’s access to the resource, especially in Prince George’s County, which has experienced several water main breaks across the region in the last year.
In May, the Montgomery and Prince George’s County Councils unanimously approved the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) Water’s Fiscal Year 2026 Budget, which supports the upgrading of aging pipes and replacement of customer-owned lead water service lines.
District Heights resident Jumoke Ayodeji told The Informer that professionals have been in her community for the last few months, replacing water pipes. While she said this maintenance is needed, sometimes residents’ water gets shut off in the process.
Now, she fears that the construction of a data center would either make this maintenance more difficult or worsen the water quality across the county and surrounding areas.
“To say [they’re] going to build a data center would completely undermine any type of environmental work that they’ve been doing,” Ayodeji told The Informer. “What is the purpose of building a data center? Just for you to pollute the same area that you’re supposed to be cleaning up? It’s such an oxymoron, in my opinion.”
‘This Is the Future of the Planet’: The Fight Extends Beyond County
Other communities around the country are already facing the negative effects that come with living in proximity to a large data center.
Many regions, like Northern Virginia and Southern Memphis, are victims of increased air pollution due to the utilization of methane gas to power these facilities.
“Massive data centers in the hands of the capitalist class, dunked in the middle of our precious Black and brown communities, will always be entirely too destructive, too dangerous, too detrimental for us to consider,” Beacham said at the rally. “What kind of human beings would have us exchange the fresh air we breathe for tax revenue?”
While these facilities may be advertised as engines of economic growth, critics argue that the environmental toll that comes with them and the potential impact on marginalized communities is too great to push aside for capitalistic reasons.
Puryear hopes that if the Qualified Data Center Task Force decides to approve the Landover site’s construction, they will work and communicate with the community to come up with a set of conditions to abide by to safeguard public and environmental health.
“This is the future of the planet. This is the future of what our country is going to look like,” Puryear told The Informer. “So, I think this is not just about [Prince George’s] County or the DMV. This is really about the entire United States. And I think that people should look at it in that way.”
